Fergus Mason, Vapers in Power

Vapers in Power notes with concern – and disapproval – that Action on Smoking and Health continues to oppose the replacement of the EU’s inappropriate rules on electronic cigarettes with a new regulatory framework that’s actually fit for purpose. Despite repeated attempts to explain to ASH exactly why the TPD and its UK implementation are ill-advised and harmful restrictions based on misrepresented science, they persist in their support for it.

Six Year Long Senior Moment – Dick Puddlecote

I suppose we should expect it from a tobacco control industry which despises comments sections so either doesn’t have them or censors the fuck out of them, but it’s a common occurrence that they often get quite incredibly confused about which person outside of their echo chamber said what.

Paul Barnes, Facts Do Matter

This is one of those topics that you just know. One of those that you yourself understand, but find it somewhat tricky to put into some semblance of coherent speech. We all, to varying degrees, know what pleasure is. We all know what we enjoy, and we can all express; to an extent, why we enjoy something.

“E-Cigarettes May Pose the Same or Higher Risk of Stroke” than Smoking

Michael Siegel – The Rest of the Story

Earlier this week, I discussed a press release from the American Heart Association which claimed that vaping causes severe strokes and poses a higher risk of severe strokes than smoking. According to the press release: “E-cigarettes may pose the same or higher risk of stroke severity as tobacco smoke.”

CASAA

Jennifer Berger-Coleman was elected to CASAA’s Board of Directors. While new to the Board, Jennifer is certainly not new to advocacy. In addition to working on tobacco harm reduction advocacy in California, Jennifer has a long history of advocacy involving civil rights and health care issues.

This new report demonstrates British American Tobacco’s continued commitment to, and progress in providing consumers, with a choice of new, innovative products, based on sound science and game-changing technology, and how it is championing harm reduction and its potential to have a dramatic and positive effect on public health.

Joe Hildebrand

A FEDERAL government decision that was quietly slipped through last month could potentially cost millions of people more than $6,000 a year — and it’s the poor who will be the hardest hit.
That’s how much a typical smoker could save if they switched to e-cigarettes but the Therapeutic Goods Administration last month ruled to keep the quitting devices illegal.

Protecting Kids From Something They Can’t Buy Anyway

Eric Boehm – Reason

Lawmakers in New Jersey are moving to ban the sale of flavored vaping products, in an effort to stop children from being interested in a product that they are not allowed to buy in the first place.

The state already has a ban on flavored tobacco products, with only clove, menthol, and tobacco flavors allowed, and a bill advancing through the state legislature would extend that ban to electronic cigarettes too

Nancy Sutthoff, AVCA

Many people are stating that they don’t want their tax dollars to pay for people to use e-cigarettes to switch off combustible tobacco. Even after being advised that their tax dollars already subsidise the current NRT available (gums, lozenges, patches, inhalers, prescriptions for Champix and Zyban) that simply is not working for a large part of the population, some of the rhetoric bandied about is quite shocking in this day and age.

Thanks to the efforts of two investment funds, Teitelbaum’s Homewood Capital and Mudrick Capital Management, the company raised the $35 million needed to restore the capital and to securize the financial situation of the company, said a press release on February 23. The brand is now back on the marketplace with a new distribution of partners

A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise…

Vapid EU – Dick Puddlecote

You may have read here often that the incessant state-funded campaigns against smoking – and state-funded assaults on any other enjoyable legal product for that matter – have absolutely nothing to do with health. Well, it seems The Times is now coming to the same conclusion….

Ecigs only helped 16,000 people? – New Nicotine Alliance

In his recent paper published in the journal ‘Addiction’ Robert West and colleagues tried to count the number of additional people who successfully quit smoking in 2014 and would not have done so if ecigs didn’t exist.You can read the paper here. The conclusions drawn in this analysis have prompted a great deal of debate….

Action on Choice

Governments spend money and need to raise taxes to pay for that spending. As irritating as it is to have our pockets picked constantly, the Revenue will use all sorts of means of extracting our cash at every point we earn or spend money. But in some cases, taxation is used to punish us for our bad behaviour to an astonishing degree – and no more so than when it comes to smoking.